Buy the close, sell the open

Buy the close, sell the open

This is pretty simple: buy stocks on the close and then sell them the next morning.

In a note Monday afternoon, analysts at Bespoke Investment Group compared the performance of the “buy the open, sell the close” strategy to “buy the close, sell the open.”

And buying stocks at the end of the day and selling them right at the market open the next morning was a big winner.

Since the January 1993 inception of the ‘SPY’ ETF that tracks the S&P 500, buying the index at the end of business and selling the next morning has seen a $100 investment rise more than 480%.

Buying the open and selling the close, in contrast, has lost about 20% over that same period.

As Bespoke writes, “Over this longer time frame, the market has actually lost ground during regular trading hours, and you would have been better off only owning the market outside of trading hours than you would have been simply buying and holding.”

So US stocks rise when you’re asleep and fall when you’re actually on the desk.